NE BUSINESS BUREAU
GANDHINAGAR, SEPT 16
The leaders of the real estate sectors urged the Gujarat government to reduce the stamp duty for registration on the lines of the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments which was also endorsed by the Centre. They also lamented the lack of a skilled workforce in the construction industry is hampering its growth and the state government should address this issue. During this pandemic period, the adaptation of automation will in no way impact the jobs in this labour-intensive industry as allegedly feared by the workers. Instead, it will lead to upskilling of workers which in turn will help execute the projects well in time with more perfection with less spread of the pandemic.
They were speaking at the virtual launch of the new Exhibition ‘INFRACONEX’ that will cater to the Indian construction equipment sector. The three-day Expo slated for 6th-8th August 2021 at Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
Founder –President of Construction Equipment Rental Association (CERA) Satin Sachdeva said that automation, telematics, AI and digitalization are the need of the hour, more due to the pandemic where fewer contacts lead to a better outcome and the deliveries of the projects can be quickened.
When asked “With the help of cloud-based Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), Machine Learning (ML), and most importantly, Building Information Modelling (BIM), the construction sector will make the most of it. But it will hit hard the labour force. How the industry will address this issue?”, Sachdeva said that skilling and training the labour force is needed to infuse the aforementioned technologies into the construction industry, and he further emphasized that with such skilled labour force more requirements of such human resources will be generated so no need for fear of a reduction in the labour force.He further added that the state government should help in raising the skill levels of the labour force by imparting training according to the needs of the industry.
Secretary of GIHED CREDAI Sanket Shah has put forward a request to the Gujarat government to reduce the stamp duty to benefit the end-user and added that there is no profit to the developers in this case. This has been done by the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh governments.Gujarat Contractors Association (GCA) chairman Arvind Patel Chairman mentioned that the policies of the govt should be well circulated so that all the departments of the govt lie on the same page with respect to such policies and their implementation. Patel further quoted a recent incident in Ahmedabad where a contractor was penalised with Rs 1 crore when a few COVID-19 positive cases were found at a site. He said that “if” inspite of following the SOPs still there are positive cases then the developers or contractors should not be penalised as it would scare them further. He mentioned that already the migrant workers are not returning back for work and such steps won’t help further.
Yogesh Mudras, Managing Director, Informa Markets in India said, “The Indian road infrastructure and highways construction industry, including the equipment and materials, are the biggest component in driving the economy and the second-largest employer after agriculture. With the government’s projection of ₹111 trillion investments for 2020-25 to develop social and economic infrastructure to boost the economic growth, allied industries such as the construction equipment market will be augmented.”
“InfraConex aims to create a business /experience for all the industry stakeholders such as construction equipment companies, distributors, policymakers, government, financial institutions, associations, organizations, forums, and alliances related to construction equipment market. The expowill also help the MSME companies from the construction sector to connect with the financial institutions to better understand the government policies of funding MSME. This would be especially useful given that 30 % of equipment manufacturers in India comprise Gujarat-based MSMEs. Special products zone will be created to display the innovative products manufactured by the MSMEs.”
With the Government’s mission of ATMANIRBHAR BHARAT and vision to increase MSMEs contribution to India’s GDP to over 50% from the current 29%, the event will also facilitate the MSME companies with special pricing at the MSME Pavilion and will allow meeting the policymakers & buyers. Apart from providing ease of doing online business, the expo will act as a catalyst for global networking with foreign manufactures, he added.
